December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

appropriate laptop
by Loren Fleckenstein 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Advice, please: I plan on purchasing notebook PCs for myself and colleagues to that are capable of running much-awaited Phil Zimmermann's voice encryption program. I'll probably get something based on the 486 DX2 chip. What type of sound card must these computers be capable of accepting in order to run the encryptor?

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Secret sharing made short
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I came upon a paper with this title in the 1993 Crypto conference proceedings, by Hugo Krawczyk. He pointed out that with the Shamir-type secret splitting which we discuss here periodically you have considerable space expansion. Splitting a message of M bits into N shares causes each share to itself be M bits. Krawczyk shows a simple system which basically has each share be only M/N bits. (I will ignore for simplicity the issue of providing a threshold K<N such that any K of the N shares are sufficient to restore the message.) He achieves this be foregoing "pure" information-theoretic secrecy in favor of "mere" computational secrecy. This is a reasonable tradeoff since most implementations of Shamir sharing end up relying on computational secrecy for their random numbers, anyway. Krawczyk's idea, in the simple subset I am describing, is almost embarrassingly easy. Take your message M and encrypt it using a random IDEA or DES key. Split the resulting cyphertext into N pieces (just carve it up) and give each piece to a shareholder. Take the IDEA/DES key and Shamir-split it into N pieces and give those out as well. (Shamir splitting for this case can be done simply by having N-1 of the pieces be totally random, and having the last piece be the xor of the IDEA/DES key and the N-1 random pieces. Only by xor'ing all N pieces can the original key be recovered.) Everyone ends up with slightly over M/N bits; they have M/N plus the size of a DES or IDEA key. But that is pretty close. And unless IDEA or DES can be broken they will have to recover all of the shares in order to recon- struct the key and read the message. For generalization to the K<N case you still use Shamir splitting on the IDEA or DES key, but the message itself gets split up using an error-cor- recting code concept so that K pieces are enough to reconstruct the message. This requires M/K bits per share, plus the overhead for the DES/IDEA key. This sounds like it would be a good enhancement to the Shamir splitting code that was posted here. The IDEA or DES module could be a source of random bits for the Shamir splitting. PGP's IDEA module is pretty self-contained and has a random-number entry point. (Oh, well, I've come this far, I might as well finish it. The message distribution scheme Krawczyk gives is this: split the message into K pieces. Treat each piece as the coefficient of a K-1 degree polynomial. Evaluate the polynomial at X=0,...,N-1 and let the results be the shares. Now any K of the shares will allow the polynomial to be reconstructed, and by concatenating the coefficients we recover M. This is similar to Shamir's scheme but is not informationally secure and has shares of size M/K.) Hal

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Re: appropriate laptop
by Michael Handler 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 13 Aug 1994, Loren Fleckenstein wrote: > Advice, please: I plan on purchasing notebook PCs for myself and > colleagues to that are capable of running much-awaited Phil > Zimmermann's voice encryption program. I'll probably get something based > on the 486 DX2 chip. What type of sound card must these computers be > capable of accepting in order to run the encryptor? The specs I have say SoundBlaster, which I assume means just standard 8-bit SoundBlaster minimum, with 16-bit ASP or WaveBlaster not necessary or supported (at least at first...). All will become clear when Nautilus 0.2 is released, as VoicePGP will use that as its code base. The Mac version will just use the built-in sound hardware. The 486DX2 will be more than sufficient. Initially, the specs called for a 486 chip at least, but the Nautilus developer (forgot his name... Bill someone) said that a 386/33Mhz would be sufficient. ------------------------------------------------------------------ ------ Michael Brandt Handler -- Philadelphia, PA -- <grendel(a)netaxs.com> \bi/ PGP v2.6 public key available -- 1984: We're Behind Schedule \/

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pubring
by dwomack＠runner.utsa.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I just abused the school computer by downloading the public keyring for pgp at ftp.demon.co.uk. It's dated July 30, which is fine... but they have a caution about it no longer being updated automatically. Will anyone be starting a new public keyring after Sept 1? Regards, Dave

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Tommy the Tourist's New Home
by nobody＠ds1.wu-wien.ac.at 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- werewolf(a)io.org (Mark Terka) asked: > > Tommy the Tourist <nobody(a)CSUA.Berkeley.EDU> (Anon User) wrote: > > > > Welcome back, Tommy, we missed you! <g> Hope you're enjoying your > > new (CSUA) "home"... (Time for everyone to update their > > "chain.ini" file, BTW.) > How come? Has soda gone down or something? Or has there been an address > change? Soda was down for a week while it was moved to a different location. The new address is "remailer(a)soda.csua.berkeley.edu". I'm told that the old address will continue to work for a limited time, but it's best to get in the habit of using the correct one. I also understand that the crypto archives have also moved, but I'm not really sure of the details. --- Diogenes -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6 iQCVAgUBLkWDGuRsd2rRFQ1JAQH9UQP/Y5IVnEPiOVtxYmaakHMxK9huPvdsOqsC qgaH9OUKEc6MDVz7NWI/ZtW9V8FqMGfEXEN0a4rMuvgyeq5P2VgqOuMWUcOOKwKP m8jEioG+AoJy6ZWRdufz8rkkc7rU73s9a2Xfktf62rG0PSjs7g9xJrjXPCKSk+PT 2iq18F2sBPo= =5LAw -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Anonymous posters & Misinformation
by anonymous＠extropia.wimsey.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-=> Quoting Jason Burrell to All <=- JB> mcdaniel(a)u.washington.edu (McDaniel) wrote: > Anonymity is possible with any e-mail address. I have noticed > however that a higher proportion of anonymous posters abuse > the trust of their fellow (and often gullible) netters with > clever deceptions and so on. I would love to see examples of this. "Macho" McDaniel seems to have a weed up his ass over the whole concept of anonymity on the net, and will flame any anonymous poster in any newsgroup. He simply doesn't get it. He presumably wants us all to wear red uniforms and advance in ranks in frontal assaults, "fight fair" and generally act like stationary targets in controversial netvenues. I was astonished to see the completely irrational flap the control addicts in rec.guns, talk.politics.guns and ca-firearms@ shell.portal.com put up when several people objected to the unilateral banning of anon posts. It was just incredible how these "freedom-loving Americans" couldn't handle the concept of anonymity or posts they couldn't _control_. I can't understand why they don't go get a job with Sarah Brady, the NSA or the BATF so they can make a paying career of oppressing others. Not once was a logical refutation of the anon argument posed but in spite of this the anti-anon hysteria prevailed. JB> Now, I could go into the process of forging mail using JB> the "magic 5*5", but I won't. I don't want to teach a bunch JB> of people to forge mail and give them a false sense of security. Yes, this is the whole point. If someone wants to hoax a newsgroup, he can _easily_ fabricate an "good" ID in the time it has taken me to write this message so far. If McDaniel is so phobic about remailered posts, _why doesn't he scroll past them and shut the fuck up?_ Anon posts _say_ they're anon and are posted on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Obviously McDaniel is too neurotic to do either and wishes us to share his personal problem. His argument about anon "net pollution" is also absurd, considering the staggering differential level of "pollution" generated by other perennial net-banes such as gross over-quoting and irrelevant cross-posting. This reminds me of the stingingly accurate net adage... "Sig files are annoying, juvenile, stupid and a waste of bandwidth. Of course, so are 90% of the posts on Usenet." McDaniel can save his tantrums and stick to moderated newsgroups populated by like minded netnazis. > My proposal would only make anonymos posters known to the list > owner. I believe it is a pretty much accepted belief that NSA > keeps track of atleast those users of anon.penet.fi.. so > who are they being anonymous from? Just the general readers. JB> Now here we go. The cypherpunks remailers don't have mapping tables. JB> They don't send back confirmations. The messages come out in JB> a form like: "From: nobody(a)shell.portal.com". Ignorance strikes again, as it did in the rec.guns exchange! Penet is a trivial, unencrypted remailer. It provides only the most simple anonymity. Other remailers are run from private, unlogged machines using PGP and sophisticated traffic-analysis countermeasures. If PGP has been made transparent by NSA cryptanalysts all bets are off, but otherwise the sophisticated use of chained, encrypted cypherpunks remailers makes anon-posting virtually bulletproof. JB> These remailers are designed to PREVENT the kind of thing you want to JB> do. Indeed! > Perhaps a crack-down on current anonymous abuses would encourage > responsible parties to develop services more responsive to > taking care of abusive usage and educating their users as to > their own responsibility. "Crack-downs"... I'm really getting tired of this mindset. No doubt McDaniel is salivating profusely waiting for Gore's Federally controlled "Information Superhighway" with all e-mail identified and tracable by use of Clinton's National ID "SmartCard" (don't laugh - this was a specific, stated purpose of the project). JB> This defeats the purpose of an anonymous remailer. If I'm going JB> to send anonymous E-MAIL/posts and then have someone else know about JB> it, it isn't very anonymous, is it? I should say not. > There are some groups where I would never want to see anonymous > posting restricted. Having seen McDaniel's flames of anon users in other forums, I _really_ doubt the sincerity of this statement.

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Bruce Schnier Posting....
by werewolf＠io.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Anybody else notice that Bruce Schnier (author of Applied Cryptography) appears live and well on the Internet ... at least judging from his recent post to sci.crypt. He did return my E-Mail admitting to be the author, so it was rather interesting seeing someone known to us posting. sort of like seeing a message from Sterling or Gibson (although Gibson isn't connected).

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Re: POST:Gaining ISDN Privacy with data encryption
by andreas.elbert＠gmd.de 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> >Making the public ISDN network private is possible though data encryption to >maintain security, say a pair of ISDN researchers whose organization is soon >to become and ISDN user. > They probably are right :-) A daughter of the german PTT has been offering ISDN-DES-phones for some years now. Welcome to the Club !

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Zimmermann & Johnson at Sept. RMIUG
by adwestro＠ouray.Denver.Colorado.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I have been told that noted Colorado crypto experts Phil Zimmermann and Mike Johnson, along with Phil's attorney, Phil Dubois, will be panelists at the September meeting of the Rocky Mountain Internet Users Group. The meeting will be on Tues. 9/13, 7-9 pm at NCAR in the Sovereign Republic of Boulder. Corrections/additional info gratefully accepted. Alan Westrope <awestrop(a)nyx.cs.du.edu> __________/|-, <adwestro(a)ouray.denver.colorado.edu> (_) \|-' PGP 2.6 public key: finger/servers PGP 0xB8359639: D6 89 74 03 77 C8 2D 43 7C CA 6D 57 29 25 69 23

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FYI
by Carl Ellison 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Path: news.clark.net!news.sprintlink.net!neon.house.gov!hr.house.gov!JPX From: JPX(a)hr.house.gov Newsgroups: talk.politics.crypto Subject: Congressional Committee takes to the Net (long) Date: Fri, 12 Aug 1994 16:35:20 GMT Organization: Committee on Science, Space & Technology Lines: 130 Distribution: na Message-ID: <JPX.38.2E4BA4C8(a)hr.house.gov> NNTP-Posting-Host: 143.231.251.142 Summary: House Science Committee goes on-line Keywords: Congress House Science Committee This is the initial posting from the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology of the U.S. House of Representatives, chaired by the Honorable George Brown of California. We have agreed to serve as the "beta" testers for House Committees trying to learn how to use the Internet. We posted this message to some of the USENET newsgroups that discuss topics relevant to our jurisdiction over Federal civilian research and development activities to: (1) Increase the number of people who know we do have Internet access; (2) Indicate how we can be reached on the net; and (3) Start learning how to take advantage of this information system in our daily activities. Getting the Congress to use Internet has been discussed in a few threads on various USENET newsgroups of late. Some of you may be familiar with the E-Mail Pilot Project established by the Committee on House Administration, chaired by the Honorable Charlie Rose of North Carolina. Those Members of the House currently maintaining an electronic mailbox for constituent communications may be found by e-mailing "congress(a)hr.house.gov" with the text "HELP" or "INFO" in the message body. You will receive an automated response with the necessary instructions. Also, the text of legislation introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives during the current Congress is now available on a W.A.I.S server located at the House Information Systems data center. The server may be accessed from the directory at quake.think.com or using the following information: Server: diamond Port: 210 Database Name: USHOUSE_house_bill_text_103rd It can also be found on gopher.house.gov in: Congressional Information/Legislative Resources The database contains the text of House bills beginning with October 1993 and is updated daily. What follows now is the message you will automatically receive in response to messages sent to housesst(a)hr.house.gov, the Committee's Internet address. It describes items like the Committee's gopher server, which you can also find at gopher.house.gov. ----------- begin ----------- Welcome to the electronic mailbox system for the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology of the U.S. House of Representatives. This Internet service is provided for ease of communication with the Members and staff of the Committee. If your message is addressed to a specific Member, it will be printed out in hard copy and forwarded to the Member's office for response by U.S. Mail. If your message is addressed to a staff member of the Committee, it will be forwarded electronically to that staff member for response. Depending on the nature of the response, it might reach you in either electronic or postal form. Messages for the Committee press office will be acknowledged electronically and then followed up on, if necessary, with material by post or fax. You can reach the press office directly via Internet at "sstpress(a)hr.house.gov". The Committee also maintains a bulletin board on the House of Representatives Internet gopher server at "gopher(a)hr.house.gov". Much of the public information material provided by the Committee is available on this gopher system. Much of this information also is available on the Committee's "Straight Talk" voice-response system. Dial 202/225-3018 and follow the menu instructions for a touch-tone telephone. Thank you for contacting the House Science Committee. Please be patient as we experiment with this new way of better serving your communications needs. If you wish to write to the Committee, please direct your correspondence to: Committee on Science, Space, and Technology 2320 Rayburn House Office Building U.S. House of Representatives Washington, DC 20515 ----------- end ----------- At this time, we suggest you supply both your e-mail and postal addresses in any communication to the Committee. Each office in Congress has its own policy for responding to public inquiries. So, if we forward your e-mail to a particular Member's office, they may choose to respond with a regular letter. Our Committee hopes to increase our use of e-mail in responding to public inquiries. We have chosen the following subset of USENET groups for our initial foray into the net.world: alt.california alt.cyberspace alt.dcom.telecom alt.politics.datahighway comp.dcom.telecom comp.org.cpsr.talk comp.org.eff.talk misc.education misc.education.science misc.legal sci.agriculture sci.astro sci.bio.ecology sci.chem sci.energy sci.engr sci.environment sci.geo.geology sci.math sci.med sci.misc sci.physics sci.research sci.space.policy talk.environment talk.politics.crypto Please feel free to repost this message to other groups that might find the information of value. Your comments on what should be carried by this channel of communications would also be welcomed. --------------- Committee on Science, Space, and Technology U.S. House of Representatives Washington, D.C. 20515 HOUSESST(a)HR.HOUSE.GOV DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in this posting are those of the sender and do not necessarily reflect those of the Committee, the Chairman or any Member of Congress.

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